(^68) Holidays
T
he Great British Bake Off is
back and we’re all once again
craving the irresistible aroma of
newly baked bread. When it comes
to travel, an in-house bakery is
the ultimate hotel welcome pack-
age, dispensing an alchemy of wholesomeness
and indulgence with every delicious croissant
or golden roll. Whether they’re venerable
establishments or new to this hotel trend,
here’s where you can use your dough to really
loaf around.
Hotel Rival Stockholm
When the Rival opened in 2003, owner Benny
Andersson of Abba told me having a bakery
would help the hotel connect to the community.
And sure enough, on any day of the week,
you’ll see the only-in-Scandinavia sight of a
rank of prams outside, all with sleeping babies,
while parents catch up over a coffee and a
straight-from-the-oven pastry inside.
The rest of the hotel is as thoughtful as its
bakery, 99 spacious rooms, some with balco-
nies, in the trendy area of Sodermalm.
Signature bake: Cinnamon rolls.
B&B doubles from £150.
rival.se
Hambleton Hall Rutland
When this Michelin-starred hotel
wanted to ensure its guests got
the perfect breakfast in the morn-
ing, the owner started his own
bakery business.
Now, with five branches of the
bakery in local towns, it specialises
in quintessentially British-baked
goods, including english muffins,
eccles cakes and, most recently,
a reinterpretation of the Second
World War National Loaf.
hambleton has created its own
culinary classic, too – the Rutland
Pippin, an apple-shaped pastry with
ham hock, sausage meat, apple and
quince, which also appears on the
afternoon tea menu in the hotel.
Signature bake: Rutland Pippin.
B&B doubles from £325.
hambletonhall.com
babylonStoRen South africa
South Africa’s foodiest hotel doesn’t
have far to go to get the ingredients
for bread; the wheat and rye comes
from its own farm. This is also
one of the country’s most beautiful
hotels; a white-washed, gabled
series of buildings in the Cape
Winelands near Franschhoek.
The heart is the bakery; all guests
get the chance to join the baking
team for a session.
Signature bake: Pear and
gorgonzola bread.
B&B doubles from £350.
babylonstoren.com
tHe angel inn abergavenny
A coaching inn since 1829, a posh
foodie hotel since 2002, The Angel
has 35 rooms spread between the
hotel and its nearby Michelin-
starred outpost, The Walnut Tree
restaurant. Since 2016, it’s also had
the Angel Bakery next door.
Open at 8am from Tuesday to
Saturday, it’s an uplifting blend of
organic flours and French butter
and the pick of the baked goods
go to the hotel guests, as well as
providing key elements of an
award-winning afternoon tea.
Signature bake: Welsh cakes.
B&B doubles from £119.
angelabergavenny.com
le bRiStol Paris
One of Paris’s most luxurious
hotels has gone one step further
than its Michelin-starred competi-
tors. It has installed a working
flour mill to produce bread for
its three-Michelin-star epicure
restaurant. It mills a selection
of ancient seeds, grown near Cor-
bieres, including spelt, emmer
and khorasan, designed to taste
fresher and cause less bloating
than wheat loaves (important in
fashion-minded Paris).
Guests at the hotel can visit the
mill as well as taste the results. If
you eat at epicure, you’ll go home
with a loaf.
Signature bake: epicure
Living Loaf.
Doubles from £1,000, room-only.
oetkercollection.com
at tHe CHaPel bruton
In this beautiful Somerset town, a
former Baptist chapel has been
turned into a bakery with rooms.
A wood-fired oven is the basis
for baker Tom hitchmough’s prod-
ucts, alongside stone-ground
organic flour and long fermenta-
tion periods. Upstairs, the seven
rooms follow the same principle,
with clean designs and a touch
of luxury; each morning freshly
baked croissants are brought to
your room.
Signature bake: Gluten-free
flaxseed bread.
B&B doubles from £125 a night.
atthechapel.co.uk
Hotel SaCHeR vienna
Some cakes are worth a 50-year
legal battle to protect the recipe.
Sacher torte – a chocolate cake
with a layer of apricot jam and
chocolate icing – has been made at
the hotel Sacher since 1876.
It’s Austria’s most famous cake,
indulgent and historic in equal
measure and the hotel that sur-
rounds it doesn’t disappoint either,
with gilding and grand rooms over-
looking the Vienna Opera house.
Signature bake: Sacher torte.
Doubles from £449, room-only.
sacher.com
Hotel PRaktik bakeRy
barcelona
They don’t pipe the smell of the bak-
ery into the rooms but this hotel in
the classy eixample district is small
enough to make it feel that way. The
first thing guests see is the glass-
walled kitchen where the bakers
are kneading away under the eye
of watchful owner Anna Bellsola.
Speak Spanish? You can also take a
baking class. The 74 rooms upstairs
are as practical as the hotel’s name
suggests, simple and white with
tiling and wafty curtains.
Signature bake: Fruit bread.
B&B doubles from £49.
hotelpraktikbakery.com
Hotel JoSef Prague
This severely modernist hotel in
the Czech capital has a warm heart,
thanks to its bakery which was
placed at the centre. Guests can
look into the ovens to watch the
croissants rise – the butter comes
from the Czech hills, the flour is
imported from France.
Signature bake: Dark rye bread
with dates and figs
Doubles from £104, room-only.
hoteljosef.com
As smash-hit series
returns, Sarah
Turner cooks up
a mouthwatering
list of the hotel
world’s star bakers...
The Great British
Global Bake Off
10 Hotels
witH
tHeir own
bakeries
A SLICE
OF THE
HIGH LIFE:
Le Bristol
hotel in
Paris, right,
and a baker
hard at
work at The
Angel Inn,
Abergavenny,
left
V1
wallpaper
(WallPaper)
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